RESISTANCE – They Fought Back

Jeri Jacquin

Currently in New York and coming to Los Angeles from directors Paula S. Apsell, Kirk Wolfinger and Abramorama is the stunning documentary RESISTANCE – They Fought Back.

At Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia, Professor Richard Freund, a Jewish Historian, Archaeologist tells of student asking, “why didn’t the Jews resist the Nazis?”. It is 1944 and the Germans are losing the war but the death camps are going strong. It is the voice of Marcel Nadjari, an Auschwitz prisoner says they were taken from Greece to a crematorium. Nadjari was one of the Sonderkommando.

Professor Gideon Greif, a Holocaust Historian referred to the prisoners, and rightly so, of being slaves to the Germans. Nadjari tells of what happened to the people in the chambers keeping the death camps a secret. Nadjari tells his own secret of crematorium 3 and the discovery of nine letters. Buried in a thermos, he describes in detail of the schedule giving historians a perspective of what actually happened.

Pawel Sawicki of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, thought the find incredible. Professor Freund believes that resistance is where the stories begin. He believes that the Jews did not go to their death like sheep to a slaughter but, in fact, they fought back (both armed and unarmed).

The documentary calls BOOK 1: Amidah – Resistance by any other name, and begins in Warsaw, Poland in 1939. As the Germans attack Poland, the war has officially begun. Seventeen-year-old Feige Peltel (codename: Vladka), speaks about when the Germans entered their city. Feige’s father tells them that the Germans are human and is shocked to discover what they are truly capable of. Vladka’s son Steven and wife Rita talk about what the family was told about the Germans. Father Benjamin Meed (and later Vladka’s husband) at the tender age of 21 was part of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance.

Poland has a large Jewish population and the Germans would make it a prison. Professor Avinoam Patt from New York University, tells of how half a million Jews were forced into a ghetto. Marek Edelman, 21, was also a part of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance and describes the living conditions forced on the Jewish people. From the small spaces to the amount of food they could eat, the Germans even filmed the death of people as if they were to blame.

The question of “why didn’t they fight back?” is answered by Rita Meed of ‘collective punishment’. If one person did something to fight back, one thousand could be punished for it. Their resistance was more spiritual and taking care of one another. The unarmed resistance is called Amidah explains Professor Dina Porat, Yad Vashem/Tel Aviv University. It means ‘stand up’ – meaning they will not give in to what is happening. Professor Yehuda Bauer of Yad Vashem/Hebrew University expands the definition as to “sit, stand, lie, or swim or stand up – it makes absolutely no difference – it is Amidah.”

Benjamin Meed took it upon himself to start a school because, as Professor Bauer says, “educating the young for after the war was against the Germans way”. Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland says, “the Germans wanted to undermine the humanity of the individual”. Germans wanted to show beggars and such to propagate their agenda. To keep their humanity together, people like Emanuel Ringelblum (codename: Oyneg Shabes) is going to make sure that it doesn’t happen by documenting life in the ghetto by becoming the Leader of Oyneg Shabes Archive. They documented life in the Warsaw ghetto, sealed it and buried it. David Graber, 19, buried the archive in the ground saying, “let history bear witness”.

Poland waits for the occupation to end not realizing that the goal of the Nazis is extermination. In Kovno, Lithuania, it is happening. A ghetto has sprung up and an underground resistance takes shape with more schools and an orchestra. At Fort IX in Kaunas/Kovno, Lithuania, Jews are disappearing. Paul Bauman, BGC Engineering Inc., talk of how people now do not know that 50,000 Jews died in this wide-open spot. Bauman’s team of engineers is trying to locate the death trenches. Ilya Lensky of the Jews in Latvia Museum says that no one could have believed what happened could happen. Professor Harry Jol, University of Wisconsin – EAU Claire, says what is important that stories are believed and they are here to verify stories.

The parents of the children of Kovno tried to save them. Professor Patrick Henry of Whitman College Emeritus says that only 11% of Jewish children survived to 1945. One such survivor is Dana Mazurkevich, Violinist, who’s parents found a way to smuggle her to safety as a small baby. She saw her parents doing so as a huge act of resistance.

In Vilnius Lithuania, also called Vilna, was considered the most Jewish city in the world as Professor David Fishman, from the Jewish Theological Seminary, explains. Samuel Bak, an artist, was a ghetto survivor from Vilna who saw his home as a center of learning and spirituality. The Germans arrived, attacking in 1941 and became overwhelmed with all things Jewish so they created The Paper Brigade to go through everything. Hadas Kalderon, granddaughter of the Yiddish Poet Avrom Sutzkever said the Germans wanted to make a Jewish Museum without Jewish people. Her grandfather was chosen to select the materials but instead, they spent time rescuing books and papers. What they could get through, they made a library and seen as a form of resistance.

Michael Kovner, son of Abba and Vitka Kempner-Kovner, is a painter like his father. The youth movement became important for the young. Two-thirds of the 70,000 population of Vilna were killed in the first six months of German occupation. In the Ponari Forest outside of Vilna are burial pits holding over 100,000 people. In 1941, Lovner calls out for the Jews to fight back knowing that once out of the gates, people will not come back. They are about to get help from a Finnish book. Now, Vilna has one goal – armed uprising.

But they were not the only ones preparing!

Also included, Professor Michael Berenbaum (American Jewish University), Margers Vestermanis (Historian, Riga Ghetto Survivor), Professor Yoel Yaari (Son of Bela Hazan), Lior Inbar (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum), Professor Avinoam Patt (New York University), Professor Havi Dreifuss (Yad Vashem/Tel Aviv University), Michael Mackiewicz (Polish Army Museum), Mordecai Anielewicz (Commander, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), Krystina Budnicka (Warsaw Ghetto Survivor), Svetlana Shtarkman (Historian/Tour Guide), Yonat Rotbain (Daughter of Ruzka Korchak), Michael Kagan (Son of Jack Kagan, Survivor), Chaim Melcer (Sobibor), Tomaz Oleksy-Zborowoski (Museum and Memorial in Sobibor), Esther Raab (Sobibor Resistance survivor), Alexander Pechersky (Soviet POW), Leon Felhendler (Son of a Rabbi), David Gur (Budapest Resistance Fighter), Professor Steven Bowman (University of Cincinnati Emeritus), Leon Cohen (Sonderkommando Prisoner), Eliezer Eisenschmidt (Sonderkommando Prisoner), and Ronnen Harran (Son of Ada Neufeld, Survivor).

Abramorama is the preeminent global theatrical distributions and rights partner for many documentary and music films and is recognized for the consistent high quality of its work on award winning features. Over the course of 20 years, Abramorama has successfully distributed and marketed hundreds of films including Ron Howard’s Grammy Award Winning THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, Stanley Nelson’s MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL, as well as Academy Award Nominee and IDA Best Documentary Winner THE LOOK OF SILENCE. For more of what they have to offer please visit www.abramorama.com.

RESISTANCE – They Fought Back was the Official Selection of the 2023 Santa Barbara International Film Festival - Award Winner, Official Selection of the 2023 LA Indies – Award Winner, Official Selection of the 2023 Toronto Documentary Feature & Short Film Festival – Award Winner for Best Feature and Official Selection for the Boston Jewish Film Festival.

Filmed in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Israel and the United States, this film corrects the Jewish passivity myth. Eastern Europe held wide campaigns of resistance against the Nazis. This is a stunning documentary filled with stories that were never told in school or college. The documentary should now be considered a tool for teaching the truth about the Jewish Resistance. The question should never again be “why didn’t they fight the Nazis” but instead “tell us the story of the Jewish Resistance”.

I was moved beyond reason through the entire hour and a half of storytelling. It is intense, frightening, immensely sad but at the same time fascinating because of the stories being shared. Especially with the conflicts now, this documentary shares what it means to resist and on how many levels that applies to the Jewish people. Filmed in three “books”, it shows the heart of the Jewish people and the importance of never forgetting what happened so that it will never happen again. Yes, that phrase is said again and again but with this documentary, it has a whole new meaning.

In the end – you were taught they went like sheep to the slaughter, you were taught a Nazi lie!